The use of water-driven turbine devices for generating electricity is known, and over the past decades a number of designs for hydro-turbines have been produced. Among such known devices is that which is the subject of my own U.S. Pat. No. 3,980,984, and that shown in prior U.S. Pat. No. 1,326,769. In such devices the flowing water impinges on the blades or vanes of a turbine wheel, causing the wheel to rotate. This rotation is then utilized to drive the input shaft of a generator unit. In this age of energy shortage such a hydro-turbine device is of great utility, but thus far a fully satisfactory device of this type has not been made available.
To be of truly significant value, such a hydro-turbine device must be designed to convert the maximum amount of energy in the flowing water to electricity. While water wheels have been known for untold generations and hydro-turbine units for decades, they have not been designed with the thought of maximum energy recovery in mind. There is thus need for a hydro-turbine device that is economical to construct, and which will extract the maximum amount of energy from water flowing thereover. The present invention is intended to satisfy that need.